A Way Of Telling
by Cozzybob
Summary: Trowa fails to commit suicide.


**A Way Of Telling **

Rated: R

Pair: 3+1, 1+2 hints, 3x2 at the end. Implied past 3x4 (with a bitter ending).

Warning: suicide attempt, suicidal thoughts, dark humor, language

Note: Dedicated to gw_dark on LJ and IJ.

Summary: Trowa fails to commit suicide.

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* * *

_Suicide is man's way of telling God, "You can't fire me - I quit."  
--Politically Incorrect_

_Death is life's way of telling you you're fired.  
--Author Unknown_

* * *

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No matter how wasted he was, the heavy bandages that wound around his wrists signaled for all to see just how big of a shmuck Trowa Barton could be. The doctor said something about counseling--_the patient displays the classic symptoms of clinical depression--_but the others managed to talk him out of carting Trowa to the nearest asylum--_he's a danger to himself and others--_short of death threats. ("Talk to Miss Po," Wufei said, handing the doctor a number scrawled in sharp, angular strokes.)

It was nice to know they still cared about each other. Pointless, really, and unnecessary, but nice.

So, the asylum--_I'll call Po, but maintain he must be at least admitted for psychiatric evaluation_--wouldn't do good, anyhow. Some were under the impression that you couldn't do much self-harm with a spork and some plastic cutlery, but clearly they'd never met a child raised by mercenaries before. ("You don't know Trowa," Duo said, "he'll find a way.") He'd seen an eye dug from its socket with a spork, once. Then he'd seen that spork get washed and used as an eating utensil. Captain was always doing things like that, because he was a conservationist at heart... waste not, want not, as the saying goes. And Captain also used to say that the best tools of interrogation could be found in a junk drawer.

The trick was to be creative. Unfortunately, while the glass jar of highly potent moonshine that Trowa now clutched to his breast like a newborn babe would make a very nice tool when shattered, he didn't want to waste the moonshine, and it was Howard's jar, whom Trowa rather liked, so it wouldn't be very kind to go breaking the man's property like that. Besides, the others made Trowa promise, and while Trowa rarely ever kept his promises,

("Promise," Quatre demanded.)

he _did_ have a very tiny bit of integrity. Very tiny, but it was there.

Quatre had stood over his hospital bed with his arms crossed and lips curled into that familiar, Winner pout. Trowa used to think--correction, still thinks that pout is fuckable, but he was too tired at the time to bother, and besides, there was this whole awkward unsuccessful-suicide thing to consider. Not that the group had any inclination to judge; Quatre was upset, Heero stoic, and Wufei stared at the floor while Duo paced all over it, but--

("Promise.")

Duo said it wasn't fair that Trowa got to die first--if Trowa could go out with razors to his wrists and a song in his heart, than by God, Duo deserved the same thing, didn't he? What made Trowa Barton so fucking special? Duo hadn't judged Trowa for his actions, did not in fact give a damn about the attempt much at all--he just wanted to know why Trowa didn't call. ("If you're going to bleed out on the floor, make sure you do it the fuck _right_, you see? If I was there, we could've had a contest. See who died the fastest. Winner gets shotgun straight to hell, no waiting.")

Quatre scolded him rather loudly in his calm, slightly arrogant, Winneresque way, and said something about Duo's lack maturity, clearly forgetting to whom was speaking. ("That's right, let's have a contest to see who can emo the hardest. Try another one, Duo.")

Heero sat down in an empty chair upon noting the rising arguments, and stared at a very fascinating scuff mark on the tiled floor. Before Quatre could strangle him, Wufei grabbed Duo, and shoved him out of the door with orders to get them all something to eat.

When Duo whined that he didn't have any money ("Fuck, Chang, goddamned _corpses_ have more fucking money than I do."), Quatre slipped a twenty from his wallet, balled it in his fist, and pelted it at the bastard.

Duo gone, they each gave their tirades in turn. Quatre was second, claiming that what Trowa did was very "irresponsible," and whatever happened to picking up a phone and asking for help? That's what friends were for, he said.

"We're still friends, aren't we Trowa?"

Nothing was said about the five years that had floated on by after Mariemaia, hardly a word spoken between them. Quatre was a busy man with an empire to run, and Trowa lived in a tiny four-room apartment (bedroom, bathroom, living room, kitchen), without even the circus as an excuse to be utterly depressing. (Circus... Cathy. Where _was_ Cathy, anyway?)

Quatre wanted to be friends, and Trowa tried hard not to laugh. They never _had _been friends, not even during post-war, semi-sappy, philosophy-by-the-moonlight conversations. You don't blow up your friends. You don't abandon them, you don't forget them. You don't store them up on a convenient little shelf to fuck with whenever you wanted to. Because what Trowa wanted to say, was, "Friends? You don't have friends, Quatre. These days, all you have are associates."

(There will be no mentions of crushing, lost loves, and The One That Got Away.)

Trowa had manners.

"Yes, Quatre. We're still friends," he lied. "We'll always be friends."

Quatre gave a dull nod and vanished to take a call on his cell phone, so Wufei approached the bed, next off the assembly line. Trowa imagined the four of them ordered neatly on a conveyor belt, and it was Trowa's job to stand by patiently while each of them... conveyed... the many reasons he was a shmuck.

Shmuck. He was beginning to like that word. It was useful.

Wufei said very little. There was the "How are yous" and the "I trust you'll be out soons," but Trowa sensed very clearly that Wufei was thoroughly disgusted by the events. He couldn't seem to tear his eyes from the bandages gleaming like war badges around Trowa's wrists, roaring silently "I (barely) survived."

So Wufei slipped Trowa a small card with his number on it. Despite the disgust, he said, "I hope you get well," and meant it. Underneath the words, were others: _If you ever need sanctuary, call this number._

Sanctuary. He liked that word too.

And then there was only Heero.

His huge hands fidgeted with callouses as Heero stared, wide-eyed, a faint wibble to his lips. Trowa wanted to kiss him. He wanted to worry away that slight shake with his tongue, until Heero melted against him and then they could the share the silence in a way Trowa hadn't been able to with any other. He wanted to fuck Heero into reassurance, he wanted things he could never have, and it was clear, for a moment, that Heero wanted the same exact thing. And that was okay.

Until they both remembered that Heero had a wife at home, with two point five children, and it wasn't a good idea at all. Disappointed, Trowa looked away, and Heero opened his mouth, slack-jawed and voiceless.

Finally, there was a quiet, "I'm glad you're alive."

Not, "I'm glad you're okay," or "I'm glad you're feeling better," just alive, just Heero and his selfishness--selflessness?--_even if you aren't happy, at least you're still alive._

So Trowa said, "Yeah."

And Heero nodded dumbly.

Wufei glanced between the two of them and quietly left the room ("I'll find Maxwell," he said.).

Silence suddenly wasn't a virtue anymore. Trowa found himself biting his lip before he had to stop, his fingers twisting into the cheap cotton blankets of the bed. He was remembering the methods--trick was to make the cut vertical to get a really good flow going, and then slump yourself over a filled, warm bath, and just lie there with the wounds stuck open until the water was pretty much diluted blood. That's how they found him, and then they pumped three bags into his system before he was stable again. Trowa was very cold, and so they gave him two blankets for company, but even that didn't stop the stray shivering.

"Heero, could you turn up the heat?"

Heero was looking warm with a tiny bead of sweat lingering on his brow, screaming like a bow-legged slut to be licked away. But he did as Trowa asked, and the little dial went up as far as it could go.

Then Heero asked, "Is that good?"

"That's fine," Trowa said. Trowa's fists were balled with the effort to keep his hands to himself.

Awkwardness.

Heero scuffed his sneaker against the floor, making a mark, and then he stared at it. Trowa cleared his throat, tried to say something important, and then he just said, "So."

Heero: "So."

Yeah. Heero started shrugging adorably, and he licked his chapped lips. "I should probably get going," he said. "Visiting hours are almost over."

"Almost over."

"Yeah."

Heaving sigh. "Yeah..."

Heero shrugged again, an anxious thing, and he whispered, "Well, I should be..."

"Yeah," Trowa said again, his fingers flicking with a small shoo.

Heero smiled. Trowa's heart stopped.

But the smile wobbled down to a tiny little thing, and Heero grasped for the doorknob desperately. With one last glance at What Could Never Be, he whipped the door open and strode out before something foolish happened.

That was a long night.

The morning after, they let Trowa go on the condition that someone was around to look after him. Surprisingly (or maybe not surprisingly), Duo was still there and up for the job. He dragged Trowa off to Howard's place, who had a tiny little shack-like cottage on the edge of town, his illegal moonshine production vastly successful. Trowa slept on the hippy couch, occasionally smoking a stogy in between various jars of the good stuff.

So now here he was, moping on about his failed attempt to kill himself, and the very low degrees one would go to make another feel guilty about that attempt in the first place. But all guilt ever did was make a guy want to die, which is why Trowa did it in the first place. Some memory about a kid missing an eye and the mercenaries laughing up a storm, laughing right along with little no-name and his merry band of freaks. Other memories--tree, hammer, rape, embarrassment, a wired cross. Whispers of I Should've Done Something Different and I Should've Been A Little Braver. I Should've Been Stronger, Smarter, Faster.

Duo, much to Trowa's chagrin, slept on the hippy couch opposite of him. Apparently, he didn't have an apartment within the city, and he didn't have enough cash for a hotel, so crashing at Howard's place was the best option. With high-noon buzzing through the shaded windows, Howard was out somewhere in the green pastures selling his disgustingly powerful liquor. ("You sell moonshine? Since when?" "Since always," Howard replied with a toothy grin. "Ain't no shit like the good shit, as they say.")

He'd left that late morning with a hangover, a dull wave, and promises to be good.

Trowa was still drinking away his sorrows. He refused to sleep, because that brought nightmares and panic attacks, but maybe if he drank hard and fast enough, he'd forget the look on Heero's face, Wufei's unspoken disappointment, and the way Quatre seemed to whisper from every pore, _"You should've come to me."_

Duo was far less maintenance. After his initial display of immature and unhealthy jealousy, Duo seemed to shrug off the entire incident and accept it for the way things just naturally were. Which probably said quite a bit about Duo's own state of mind... but then, Trowa wasn't one to argue. He was stuck with the God of Death on suicide watch, and if that wasn't the most asinine thing he'd ever heard in his life, his name wasn't Charlie. Which it wasn't. But you get the idea.

Anyway, back to Duo. Trowa's eyes couldn't help but fixate on him as the nearest shiny object in close range, and fuck if he wasn't pretty. Duo was dead to the world, sprawled ridiculously across the couch with his long legs flopped over the edge, his braid wrapped around his neck like a noose, face buried in the suspiciously green-and-brown-stained cushions. Trowa had spent a good part of the morning watching Duo sleep, secretly admiring the way he'd stretch like a great, white cat, his mangy t-shirt riding up those washboard abs, the sad little concave tea-cup of his stomach rumbling every other hour in a sort of starved contentment. Whenever Duo rolled over, Trowa could watch the s-bend of his spine, tongue slathering at that perfect little coccyx just above the bend of his ass. Every now and then, Duo would moan something so blatantly sexual, Trowa squirmed in his seat.

At one point, he stumbled into the bathroom to take a piss, and while Trowa was there, he stared down at the ache in his groin and heaved a sad little sigh because this was the mark of true loneliness. A suicidal man should not be forced to stare at Duo's cute little rump for hours on end, listening to those faint moans and sighs, and do nothing. If he were a better man, he'd give Duo a good seeing to for being such a freaking slut in his sleep. But Trowa wasn't, and so he stumbled back to his couch, still aching, unable to pee, drinking and staring and sighing away the very last drops of his pride.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, behind razors and Quatre's eyes and a thousand tiny corpses, Trowa was still thinking about Heero. It didn't seem proper to have a hard on for Duo while he was still yearning for the quiet understanding Heero had once shared with him--it didn't matter if the bastard was married now, Trowa had always wanted the things he couldn't have. And he had a right to that, because he was shmuck. And he was lonely. Was that wrong? To want a little bit of understanding?

As he thought this, Duo rolled over and opened his eyes. He blinked, yawned, scratched his delicious little ass, and yanked the braid from around his neck, tossing it carelessly behind his back. He blinked at Trowa again several times, several hundred nanoseconds of confusion, before his mind seemed to clear in a purple haze, and he asked, hoarsely, "'Sup, Tro?" Trowa shrugged, and Duo tossed a hand. "What time is it?"

Trowa scanned his eyes to the wall clock above Duo's head and the window behind him. It was very blurry, and seemed to wobble a bit. "Two... um... t-two... ish," he said.

"Really?" Duo double-backed, a cute little 'o' sound coming from his mouth as his eyes landed on the clock. "Huh. Must've been tired."

"Uh-huh."

"Uh, speaking of," Duo glanced back at Trowa, and waved obscenely at his bandaged wrists. "You look like shit, Tro."

"'Course. Yah. Shhit. Ever w'nd'r? 'Bout s'it?"

"What?"

"Yeah, s'it. Just sayin', I don' r'lly und'rst'nd... um, why's it brown? Huh? Sshould b' purpl. Be prettier, the' they wouldn't hhhate it... haaaate it so... sso much. Yeah?" Duo stared, and Trowa found himself, of all things, giggling. Yes, giggling.

Then he sighed, a sad little sound.

"S'like if I wer purpl, w'th sparkles, an' pink ribb'ns, th-they wouldn't haa--"

"No one hates you Trowa. And, wow, wasted. Isn't that bad with massive blood loss? Not that you'd care, but--"

"'M shtupid. Razors. Sheeya." Trowa spat at the floor hatefully, and Duo winced--the saliva was gooey and dry, with the faint reddish tinge of bleeding gums. Trowa watched Duo wobble out of his vision for Howard's tiny kitchenette. "Shoulda used a gun," he muttered. "Swallowed th' barr'l."

A glass of water was thrust into Trowa face. "Here. Drink that."

Trowa pointed his left hand in the imitation of a gun. "Bang!" In his mind, Duo's brains coated the walls, and he was happy.

"Trowa--"

"Oh, yah." Instead, Trowa grabbed the glass, missing twice. Duo was fine, no blood to be seen. He toasted to the other man's health. "Down th' hatches!" With gusto, Trowa drank most of the offering one quick swig before he realized that it was water. He frowned at the bottom of the glass, and gave it back to Duo, wrinkling his nose. "S'dil... dil... delooted," he said. "Y'r whiskey sucks."

"I know." It was Duo's turn to heave that sad little sigh as he dropped back into his seat across from Trowa. They kept eye contact for a long minute, and then Duo glanced away, peering through the blinds of the window. Trowa watched, mesmerized by the sharp black slashes that barred across Duo's face from the afternoon sun. It looked like a prison sentence, the both of them forever banned from sunny paradise. Gothic, vampiric, supernatural. That was Duo's face. That was Duo. Glamorous tragedy.

"Y'r so pretty," Trowa said. He wondered what Duo would like bathed in blood... you only knew how pretty a man really was, when he was screaming in agony.

Duo glanced back and raised a brow. In Trowa's drunkenness, it seemed rather come hither. "Am I, now?" In reality, Duo was confused. He didn't hear the words very often.

"Yeah. Bet nobod hates yoo. Ev'rybody likes pr'tty peepl."

Duo gave a sharp snort and rolled his eyes. "Tro, don't be a shmuck. You're fucking gorgeous."

"Shmuck."

"S'what I said. Don't change the subject. You're very nice on the eyes, Trowa."

"Not."

"Are too."

"Not."

"I'll prove it."

"Yeah?"

And suddenly, in the cyberspace of a millisecond, Duo was _there_, in Trowa's space, on Trowa's couch, his calloused, dirty hands on Trowa's jeans. "Yeah," Duo said, their eyes connecting with a hot, white spark.

Trowa suddenly noticed the light stubble on Duo's chin, like a fine course carpet dotting along his jaw. He wondered if _he_ had one, because he hadn't shaved since the day before yesterday. He stroked the stubble, and moaned a little.

"S'not fair," Trowa whispered.

Closer now, Duo's voice was hushed. "What's not fair?"

"Wan' you t'be Heero."

Duo stiffened. His nostrils flared, and his eyes widened, like a buck caught in the headlights of an SUV.

And then he melted.

"Yeah. I know the feeling," Duo said.

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

"Oh," Trowa said.

"Yeah."

"But I'm not..." Duo slid into Trowa's lap, arms hung over his shoulders as they lowered down, closer, hovering their lips over each other. "I'm not Heero. You know that, right?"

"'Course."

"We're filthy. We're bad. We're scum."

Trowa was going to argue with that--they weren't quite good enough for scum--but instead all he did was repeat, "Yeah," his mouth on a mind of its own.

"We don't deserve 'im."

"Yeah."

"You know..." Whispering. So close. "Quatre would say that I'm taking advantage of you."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah," Duo said. "You mind?"

"No' r'lly..."

"Huh. Good. 'Cuz I didn't really give a flying fuck..."

And then they were kissing. Contrary to expectation, it was soft, sweet, with a faint bitter aftertaste. When Duo pulled away, he crudely wiped his mouth the back of his hand, and shook his head to clear it.

He opened his mouth--

Before he could say anything, Trowa was pulling him back down again. Waves of lust and emotion crashed around them in tidal waves, and the two of them only rose to the surface to breathe, like whales in the arctic. Ice shattered, walls crumbled, and the world stood still.

Each died a little death. When they revived, stuck together in the rolling scents of sex, weed, and spilled moonshine, the idea of waking up again wasn't so terrifying.

For a moment, Duo understood. He said nothing.

And Trowa said nothing back.

--fini


End file.
